Drill Sergeant Dygalo in tennis shoes? Join the U.S. Marines

Drill Sergeant Dygalo dominated the first half of the movie while all the Soviet paratrooper draftees were undergoing movie character development. The second half of the movie would be about them under fire, a sort of, Russian Full Metal Jacket.

Anyone noticed how drill sergeant Dygalo did all his drill sergeant work wearing an odd, jumpsuit uniform and, blue TENNIS SHOES? I don't get that one. Later on in the movie, towards the end of basic training, late one night drill sergeant Dygalo shows up in the barracks wearing full camouflage battle uniform with proper black leather laced boots. He looked awesome then.

All during basic training, drill sergeant Dygalo yells, screams, curses, pushes hard and motivates with extreme tough love the cocky young Russian draftees who could easily be cocky young American basic trainees too. I guess young men are the same all over the world. Drill sergeant Dygalo was just too uncomfortably like an American Marine drill sergeant. Dygalo would be at home at San Diego or Ferris Island, yelling at recruits at the top of his lungs. Today's U.S. Marines drill sergeants can't beat recruits like Dygalo but a long time ago they could get away slapping, kicking, and hitting recruits, but not actually beating them for any length of time.

It was also strange that sergeant Dygalo ran the platoon all by himself. Normally he would have had an assistant sergeant helping him. I was also surprised that the Soviet military authorities had any knowledge of psychiatry and an ounce of compassion to pull Dygalo out of combat and relegate him to basic training. I would have thought the military authorities would have allowed or forced Dygalo to remain in Afghanistan until the man got himself killed in battle. It was obvious later in the movie that Dygalo was a broken man and had reached his limit. None of his fellow comrades, still in Afghanistan, disagreed with Dygalo being pulled out of combat. A broken man like that is as much as danger to his own comrades.